Human-rights groups in the US urged the international community to enhance its scrutiny of China in the runup to the 2008 Olympic Games to assure that its human-rights record does not deteriorate during that time.
Their reaction came as China's harshest critics in Congress blasted the International Olympic Committee (IOC) for awarding Beijing the 2008 games, and business groups cheered the action.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Xiao Qiang (
"Selection as an Olympic site is a great honor to the Chinese people. The Chinese government must not dishonor this prestigious opportunity by violating the rights of its citizens," he said.
Xiao urged China to release all political prisoners and the recently detained Chinese-American scholars.
The New York office of the Falun Gong said its practitioners "share in the exhilaration of their countrymen and women," but also called on the international community to monitor China's compliance with its human-rights promises.
"We hope that China will not see winning the Olympics as a license to kill," said the group's spokesman Zhang Erping (
The leading rights organization, Human Rights Watch, also slammed the selection of Beijing.
"The IOC didn't even try to get guarantees on human rights," said Sidney Jones, the group's Asia director. "If abuses take place as preparations for the games proceed, it won't just be the Chinese authorities who will look bad -- the IOC and the corporate sponsors will be complicit," she said.
The Bush administration has taken a hands-off attitude. White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said "the president believes that the Olympics are a sporting event and not a political event," and a matter for the IOC to decide.
Fleischer added that the selection of Beijing was "an opportunity for China to showcase itself as a modern nation."
Former Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Jesse Helms, however, called the selection "an affront to all who dare to speak up for freedom in China."
Representative Tom Lantos, the top Democrat in the House International Relations Committee and a leading congressional human-rights crusader, said "it boggles the mind" that Beijing was selected "despite having one of the most abominable human-rights records in the world."
He called the decision "an outrage."
Henry Hyde, chairman of the House International Relations Committee said he felt Beijing's victory could help China improve its record.
"Tyranny thrives best in the shadows. The Olympics will place Beijing and its policies in the world's spotlight. And with Beijing under the international microscope, perhaps Taiwan can rest easier, at least for now," Hyde said.
Cheng Li (李程), a government professor at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, was also positive that Beijing's victory would ensure stability in the Taiwan Strait.
"There will be no war in the coming seven years and beyond. It would not make sense at all. A military conflict worries Taiwan the most, but it also worries some Chinese the most."
He also noted that China will be under increased international scrutiny up until the Olympics.
Li, however, said that the Olympic decision is bad news for Taiwan's pro-independence forces.
"Many Taiwan businesspeople will invest more in China. Many Taiwan people will probably emigrate to China, mainly Shanghai. So, It's really very bad news for those people who are pro-independence. China does not need the use of force to marginalize those pro-independence forces," he said.
Other reactions around the world included press watchdog Reporters Sans Frontieres in Paris which called for a boycott of the 2008 games.
"The vote ... is a terrible blow for the millions of Chinese who are victims of repression by a regime that executes, tortures and imprisons on a massive scale opponents and defenders of individual freedom," it said.
And the Paris-based International Federation of Human Rights Leagues said the vote for Beijing contravened the fundamental principles governing the IOC.
"The Olympic Games ... cannot get away from the universal standards and values on which the international community is based -- universally recognized human rights," it said.
British newspapers yesterday homed in on the human-rights principles at stake. The Times said the decision puts Beijing on notice that its approach to human rights will be closely watched, while The Guardian warned that so far neither China's Olympic bid nor its burning ambition to join the WTO has had much effect on attitudes towards rights at home.
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